Fix the problem

Tuesday

May 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMMay 29, 2012 at 9:50 AM

Anyone who is even moderately well-informed understands certain things about the nation's fiscal predicament: The debt level is unsustainable. Spending, especially on the entitlement programs , must be curbed. The nation's books must be brought into balance.

Anyone who is even moderately well-informed understands certain things about the nation’s fiscal predicament: The debt level is unsustainable. Spending, especially on the entitlement programs , must be curbed. The nation’s books must be brought into balance.

What’s uncertain is whether the people who can solve the problem — Congress and the president — will fulfill their responsibility to the American people and make the necessary tough decisions.

Which raises another question: whether enough Americans recognize their own responsibility to understand and support the difficult changes that must take place.

Politicians behave the way they do to satisfy voters and donors. Until enough Americans acknowledge that an unsustainable gap exists between government spending and tax revenues, and that fixing it will require sacrifice from everyone, some politicians will continue saying and doing the things that win political points — not those that can balance the budget and set a course for a stable fiscal future.

Thus come politically calculated statements from Democrats, declaring Social Security and Medicare off-limits to cuts, and from Republicans, vowing to oppose all tax hikes and declaring that allowing the United States to default on its debts would be preferable.

Entitlement programs have to be reformed if the budget is to be brought under control. The sheer size of the debt already incurred by the U.S. dictates that the nation will have to borrow more simply to honor its obligations.

To suggest that the budget can be brought under control without touching entitlement programs, or without borrowing more or raising more revenue, is to peddle fantasy.

The federal budget crisis will come to a head again as 2013 nears: Jan. 1 is the day the Bush administration tax cuts expire if Congress takes no action, as well as the day that steep spending cuts, mandated by last year’s deal to raise the debt limit, take effect.

While the combined effect of restored taxes and reduced spending would reduce the deficit, the blunt-instrument nature of such mandatory action could hurt the anemic recovery.

The problem demands thoughtful compromises, all while the most contentious presidential-election campaign in memory unfolds.

Voters in central Ohio’s 15th Congressional District showed a taste for pragmatic problem-solving by sending Republican Rep. Steve Stivers back for a second term. Stivers said, “We need to get enough votes from Republicans and Democrats to come together with a meaningful approach that we can present to the American people with a straight face and say, ‘This isn’t a Republican idea, this isn’t a Democratic idea, it’s an American idea, and this is how we’re going to solve this crisis.’ ”

Leadership from realists such as Stivers and Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, who already is meeting with Senate Democrats to search for a compromise before a new debt-ceiling crisis erupts this fall, offers some hope that Congress can find its way to solutions.

They’ll have to prevail over ideologues such as Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Urbana, a tea party conservative who appears to regard ideology as more important than saving the country from the economic disaster. “The voters didn’t elect 87 new freshmen and send me back to Congress to raise taxes and compromise with Barack Obama,” Jordan declared.

For his part, President Barack Obama spoke of the need for entitlement reform as a candidate in 2008, but as president, has failed to lead his party or Democratic voters in that inevitable direction.

Ideally, America’s future would be secured by voters who demand that their leaders make the difficult choices required. But the looming crisis requires politicians who will lead, regardless of what voters say they want.

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